Uploaded March 2022 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Moderated by
Sandy Alexandre, (Dramaturg) is an associate professor at MIT. Books: Properties of Violence. Articles: “'[The] things what happened with our family’: Property & Inheritance in August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson” (Writing Award for Outstanding Article), “Just Feathers: Righting Wrongs with Georgia Douglas Johnson’s Plumes,” “Lovesick in the Time of Smallpox: Romancing the State of Nature in Toni Morrison's A MERCY,” “From the Same Tree: Balancing Gender Through Shared Iconography in Beloved.” Book Chapters: “Adoption and Persuasion: Raising and Reckoning with Beloved,” “Ways of Absence; Or, The Unbearable Heft of Being Materialized.” Education: BA English, Dartmouth College; MA and PhD American Literature, University of Virginia.
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Featuring
Soyica Diggs Colbert is the Idol Family Professor of African American Studies and Performing Arts at Georgetown University.
Colbert’s most recent book, Radical Vision, a “loving, lavishly detailed” (New York Times) and captivating portrait of Lorraine Hansberry’s life, art, and political activism—one of O Magazine's best books of April 2021 is also described as "A devoted and deeply felt account of the development of an artist’s mind," according to Dave Itzkoff, New York Times Book Review. In this acclaimed biography of Lorraine Hansberry, Colbert narrates a life at the intersection of art and politics, arguing that for Hansberry the theater operated as a rehearsal room for her political and intellectual work.
She has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support a residency at the Schomburg Center, Woodrow Wilson Foundation, Stanford University, Mellon Foundation, and the Robert W. Woodruff Library at Emory University. Colbert has also lectured nationally and internationally at universities, high schools, and middles schools as well as for civic and arts organizations.
Colbert’s writing has been featured in the Washington Post, Public Books, Metrograph and American Theatre. She have been interviewed on NPR and commented for the New York Times, USA Today, CNN, and the Washington Post.
She is an Associate Director at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C. In addition to Radical Vision, Colbert is the author of Bodies: Theory for Theatre Studies, Black Movements: Performance and Cultural Politics, and The African American Theatrical Body. Colbert co-edited Race and Performance After Repetition and The Psychic Hold of Slavery. Most recently, she served as a Creative Content Producer for The Public Theatre’s audio play, shadow/land. Her research interests span the 19th-21st centuries, from Harriet Tubman to Beyoncé, and from poetics to performance.
Moderated by
Sandy Alexandre, (Dramaturg) is an associate professor at MIT. Books: Properties of Violence. Articles: “'[The] things what happened with our family’: Property & Inheritance in August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson” (Writing Award for Outstanding Article), “Just Feathers: Righting Wrongs with Georgia Douglas Johnson’s Plumes,” “Lovesick in the Time of Smallpox: Romancing the State of Nature in Toni Morrison's A MERCY,” “From the Same Tree: Balancing Gender Through Shared Iconography in Beloved.” Book Chapters: “Adoption and Persuasion: Raising and Reckoning with Beloved,” “Ways of Absence; Or, The Unbearable Heft of Being Materialized.” Education: BA English, Dartmouth College; MA and PhD American Literature, University of Virginia.
________________________________________________________________________
Featuring
Soyica Diggs Colbert is the Idol Family Professor of African American Studies and Performing Arts at Georgetown University.
Colbert’s most recent book, Radical Vision, a “loving, lavishly detailed” (New York Times) and captivating portrait of Lorraine Hansberry’s life, art, and political activism—one of O Magazine's best books of April 2021 is also described as "A devoted and deeply felt account of the development of an artist’s mind," according to Dave Itzkoff, New York Times Book Review. In this acclaimed biography of Lorraine Hansberry, Colbert narrates a life at the intersection of art and politics, arguing that for Hansberry the theater operated as a rehearsal room for her political and intellectual work.
She has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support a residency at the Schomburg Center, Woodrow Wilson Foundation, Stanford University, Mellon Foundation, and the Robert W. Woodruff Library at Emory University. Colbert has also lectured nationally and internationally at universities, high schools, and middles schools as well as for civic and arts organizations.
Colbert’s writing has been featured in the Washington Post, Public Books, Metrograph and American Theatre. She have been interviewed on NPR and commented for the New York Times, USA Today, CNN, and the Washington Post.
She is an Associate Director at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C. In addition to Radical Vision, Colbert is the author of Bodies: Theory for Theatre Studies, Black Movements: Performance and Cultural Politics, and The African American Theatrical Body. Colbert co-edited Race and Performance After Repetition and The Psychic Hold of Slavery. Most recently, she served as a Creative Content Producer for The Public Theatre’s audio play, shadow/land. Her research interests span the 19th-21st centuries, from Harriet Tubman to Beyoncé, and from poetics to performance.
